12 October 2005

Endgame for the Bushmen

by Steve Thomas

The oldest culture on earth is being eradicated.

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 10 — All but a few of the Bushmen living in Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve have been forcibly removed from their homes in recent days in what spokesmen for the affected communities said is a final push by the government to end human habitation there after tens of thousands of years.

The First People of the Kalahari, an activist group in Botswana, said Bushmen villages have been cut off from their main sources of food and water, and outsiders have been prohibited from entering to provide relief for the past six weeks. A heavy contingent of police, military and park rangers trucked out most of the remaining residents at gunpoint on Friday and Saturday, the group said, and the stragglers face constant harassment.

Even such basic activities as hunting game and gathering water-filled roots are now prohibited, and government officials have seized goats, sheep and other livestock the Bushmen used for food, said Jumanda Gakeredone of the First People of the Kalahari, speaking by phone from Gaborone, the capital of Botswana.

“The situation is really, really bad,” he said. “Every day, they are there with guns.”

It seems the problem is that the Bushmen are present in the game reserve, a major source of tourist dollars. European and American tourists don’t want to see brown-skinned people practicing an ancient, sustainable way of life. They want to see pretty animals. You know, nature. Not niggers. (If you know someone rich enough to be planning to tour the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, it would probably be nice of you to stop them).

The other major factor working against the Bushmen diamond mining. All of Botswana’s diamond mines are run by DeBeers. They have a US store in New York, at 703 5th Avenue (opened amid a protest). It would also probably be a nice idea not to buy from them. In fact, since DeBeers controls most of world diamond mining, it’s probably best not to buy a diamond at all. And it sure would be a shame if someone hacked their website. (Again, that’s http://www.debeers.com).

DeBeers is part of the AngloAmerican corp. According to George Draffan’s marvelous Endgame website, “Anglo owns 34 percent of De Beers (Worldscope shows 38.7 percent in 1992). De Beers owns 38 percent of Anglo.” Anglo-American’s address is 44 Main St., PO Box 61587, Marshalltown 2107, Johannesburg 2001, South Africa. Their telephone number is (27) 11-638-9111. DeBeers’ main office is in London. I don’t know where.

The phone number for the Botswana embassy is: (202) 244-4990. Their fax number is (202) 244-4164. Their address is 1531-3 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20036. Call them or write to them and express your disgust. Call them again and again and tie up their phone lines. Do the same thing with their fax machines. I guess that’s something. I guess that’s anything.

Something that also might help is donating or otherwise helping
Survival International, an organization dedicated to fighting for the independence of tribal peoples.

Other than that, and other than the rage and sorrow I feel, I don’t know how to respond to this. Maybe you can think of something.

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  1. […] These are the two primary tasks of the shaman: to heal, and to gain information from the spirit world. To do this, the shaman makes friends with the spirits and becomes, essentially, the tribe’s ambassador to the spirit world. But to speak so dicreetly of “the shaman” falls into the same ethnocentric trap that has led so many to the same fallacy that afflicts John Zerzan when he claims that shamans represented a nascent elite, and the beginnings of domestication and hierarchy (see “The Case Against Art”). Shamanic practices exist along a spectrum of openness. In his analysis of North American rock art, David Lewis-Williams’ The Mind in the Cave makes an excellent case that “the shaman’s cache,” and the vision quest found in North American shamanism fits well into Zerzan’s conception of “hidden knowledge” used to concentrate power into a shamanic elite. Even in these cultures, non-shamans must participate in shamanic rituals. Participants dance, sing, beat drums and engage in the same behaviors to elicit the beginnings of a shamanic state of consciousness–even if they do not experience it as deeply as the shaman. However, there is also another end of the scale, represented by /Xam San n/om k”ausi, or shamans (the /Xam were another San culture, close relatives of the better-known Dobe Ju/’Hoansi). Among them, one third of males and one quarter of females described themselves as n/om k”ausi, and everyone participated in shamanic ritual to a significant extent. The essential problem here is the spectrum of specialization itself, from emphasis to exclusivity. It is only with exclusivity that we see the beginnings of hierarchy and domestication. Shamans are still expected to hunt and gather as much as any other member of society. They are expected to participate in shamanic ritual as much as any other member of society. The difference is that they enjoy the philosophical life (see Paul Radin’s Primitive Man as Philosopher), and they are particularly skilled at altering their state of consciousness. They are to the spirit world what an exceptionally good hunter is to the material–not the sole arbiters, but individuals respected for their skill, and for the experience that such enthusiasm eventually accrues. […]

    Pingback by The Shaman’s Vision » The Anthropik Network — 16 October 2005 @ 1:35 AM

  2. […] Vintage Victorian racism always makes a comeback when we find ourselves unpleasantly reminded of those few scraps of indigenous people that we still haven’t completely wiped off the map. The last time Anthropik covered this story, in Steve Thomas’s post, Endgame for the Bushmen, an anonymous guest who came on to chastise us for not caring enough about the Bushmen to have been alive during the 1970s had this to say: BTW, as I understand it, the Kalahari ‘bushmen’ (3 ‘tribes’ actually) are most-closely genetically related to the Australian Aborigines and to the Inuit of the arctic. Some ‘experts’ assert that these are isolatied surviving populations of proto-humans (not “identical” species as us) but, if true, I prefer to believe ‘we’ are actually the proto-humans and that they (might have been) the truely sapient apes. […]

    Pingback by Ancient History » The Anthropik Network — 27 March 2006 @ 11:49 AM

  3. […] That was in 2003. Three years later, thanks to the genocidal greed of “Debswana” (an alliance between DeBeers and the Botswana government), the San are closer to total annihilation now more than ever (see “Ancient History” and “Endgame for the Bushmen.”) Obviously, Xhoba failed to make all the Bushmen “millionnaires” as Chennells–and many others–had hoped. The victory Chennells won for the Bushmen ultimately proved to be a mixed one, in itself. After the appetite-suppressing ingredient of Hoodia had already been patented,they managed to conclude an agreement assuring them of a share in any future profits generated by the slimming aid.Unfortunately, full recognition oftheir rights to land and cultural self-determination was not part ofthe deal. Today the active ingredient of Hoodia belongs to the owners of patents and licenses, and is no longer owned by the San. They are very dependent on those who hold the patent, and hence the exclusive rights to the use of Hoodia.8 […]

    Pingback by The Anthropik Network » Watch your body change with Hoodia! — 2 June 2006 @ 10:40 AM

  4. […] That’s why I’m so excited about this new movie hitting theaters today, Blood Diamond. Yes, the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana have been begging Blood Diamond star Leonardo diCaprio to use his money and influence to help them get their land back from Debswana (as previously discussed here, here, and here), and he hasn’t done a damn thing. But we’ve known for a long time that Leo’s an asshole, and on the whole, this film will do far more good than Leo’s silence will do harm. How do I know that? Because DeBeers is freaking out. And any time a giant, evil, previously-assumed-to-be-all-powerful corporation is freaking out over a movie, you know that’s a movie you’ve got to see. […]

    Pingback by Ending the Stone Age (The Anthropik Network) — 8 December 2006 @ 6:06 PM


Comments

  1. How do you jam faxes? how do we do anything!?

    I feel so helpless. When will it ever stop?

    Comment by Terrible — 12 October 2005 @ 10:27 PM

  2. this is terrible, but not surprising news, as the people of africa have always been and will always be exploited, by foreigners and each other. furthermore, their descendants (if their lucky enough to have any) will face discrimination throughout the world. europe really messed up that continent.

    Comment by jaded — 12 October 2005 @ 10:45 PM

  3. I was wondering when we’d finish off the Ju/’Hoansi like we did the Hazda.

    The line is cut … our birthright is burned to the last. Everything good we had is now gone. It’s left to us to reinvent it all, to make all that was old new again.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 October 2005 @ 10:47 PM

  4. Now maybe they can be “civilized” like the rest of humans and get a job.

    Sheesh.

    You know, at times I feel that the humans of this planet don’t deserve to make it. It would be better for the planet for them to blow themselves up.

    Comment by Martian — 13 October 2005 @ 11:41 AM

  5. Saddening.

    But in a way, a fire on our asses; no one can tell us how to do it anymore. How few remain who can teach us all the complexities that once were? The next vision of humanity will be wholly ours, not a permutation of theirs.

    - Chuck

    Comment by Chuck — 13 October 2005 @ 12:18 PM

  6. Martian, don’t despair entirely. The Ju/’Hoansi are humans of this planet, too.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 October 2005 @ 1:27 PM

  7. …were humans of this planet.

    Not the last of the old tribes, the first of the new.

    Comment by Benjamin Shender — 13 October 2005 @ 3:44 PM

  8. Other coverage from Savage Minds and Mother Jones.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 October 2005 @ 9:56 AM

  9. I used the n-word in my original post. It’s worth pointing out that the officials responsible for this are black Africans (the Mother Jones piece says they’re specifically from the Tswana “tribe”). Relations between the Bushmen (who are a separate “race,” not African or Caucasian) and their farming, herding Bantu neighbors (who only have a slightly better claim to the land than white South Africans) have always been exploitive, as between agriculturists and hunter-gatherers everywhere.

    Comment by Steve Thomas — 14 October 2005 @ 12:06 PM

  10. Roxy blogged about this, and mentioned a relevant Quinn quote I feel should be attached here, as well:

    Now, you know that the knowledge of what works well for production is what’s valued in your culture. In the same way, the knowledge of what works well for people is what’s valued in Leaver cultures. And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall, just as every time they stamp out a species of life a life form ultimately tested since the birth of life disappears from the world beyond recall.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 October 2005 @ 6:52 PM

  11. Roxy’s post is extremely insightful.

    A couple thousand rich people get killed in some office buildings and it takes the world by storm and sparks wars, memorial skyscrapers (skyscrapers!!!) and countless TV specials for years to come…

    Over a hundred thousand poor people die in a tsunami, headlines are made for a few weeks, international aid pours in…

    A tribal people’s tens-of-thousands-of-years-old culture, traditions and livelihood are completely eradicated, and it gets passing mention in the Washington Post:

    Comment by Steve Thomas — 16 October 2005 @ 11:42 AM

  12. (the block text is her quote, if that wasn’t clear…)

    Comment by Steve Thomas — 16 October 2005 @ 11:43 AM

  13. Ignorant American neophytes to global death - this is FAR from “news”. The SA apartheid regime spent 20 years consciously ‘wiping out the San and !Kung cultures from the Kalahari (both in Botswana and Namibia). I saw the so-called “Frontline Wars” first hand in the 70’s and 80’s. And we here are just now ‘figuring’ this out? Shame should be upon us all.

    Comment by guest — 5 November 2005 @ 2:23 PM

  14. Everyone has to learn sometime, Guest. I wasn’t even alive back then. Is it my fault for not catching that headline in the 70s and 80s? Where does my shame come into this, exactly?

    Yes, it’s horrible. Yes, I’m contributing to it. But I’ve been trained my entire life to contribute to it, and untraining myself is taking a bit of time. Most people are trained to be ignorant while they contribute to it, but I missed the ignorant part. Does this mean other people should be ashamed for what they were taught by their parents/friends/teachers/media/government, their entire culture? No. Of course not. No one should be ashamed of anything, because it isn’t their fault the world is this way. We’ve all been born into this system at one point or another. Judgment doesn’t help, shame doesn’t help, scorn doesn’t help. We all need support, and room to grow, and to have patience with ourselves and others.

    Peace.

    Comment by Devin — 5 November 2005 @ 2:41 PM

  15. Who said it was news? I’ve been aware of this for decades. The “news” is that they’re finishing the job–that the Ju/’Hoansi are being moved from the “being wiped out” column, over to the “wiped out” column, along with, say, the Hazda and what we did to them in the 1970s.

    But, this is a different thing than apartheid. Apartheid was about controlling the Bantu cultures. This is something else: this is destroying the San cultures. Apartheid ended; this hasn’t. Apartheid was official government policy; this has always been driven by the fact that we really don’t care what happens to the San.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 November 2005 @ 3:27 PM

  16. Decades, Jason? How old are you again?! lol.

    Comment by Devin — 5 November 2005 @ 4:36 PM

  17. I see my ‘crafted’ words have been as salt upon wounds. This is good.

    [quote] But, this is a different thing than apartheid. Apartheid was about controlling the Bantu cultures. This is something else: this is destroying the San cultures. Apartheid ended; this hasn’t. Apartheid was official government policy; this has always been driven by the fact that we really don’t care what happens to the San.[/quote]

    VERY TRUE, Jason (except Apartheid was about FAR more than the Bantu, IMIO it was about the Western concept of wealth and who controlled access to all of Southern Africa’s mineral/resource abundance). I didn’t intend to suggest these were the same ‘thing’ (and I’ve witnessed both) - merely that they are relative equivalents with each illustrative of willfully destructive ‘pink ape’ prejudice (greed).

    And Devin? - I have no answers to your rhetorical questions - only you can find them for youself (which obviously you believe you have). However, I can say that when (if) you actually ‘go there’ (in this case, lived in the Kalahari) you don’t ever really come back. Try it sometime. You’ll not look at a ‘McDonalds’ (this culture) - or yourself - the same way again.

    See other comments I’ve posted on this, if interested, at http://survivalacres.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=674
    (participation also encouraged there)

    Comment by guest — 5 November 2005 @ 5:40 PM

  18. From your rant you linked to:

    I truly ‘amazes’ me - No, make that “enrages me” - to hear(read) pompous ignorant arrogant Americans speak about things they know absolutely nothing of - such as common Third World realities - as if they actually knew something real - or even cared. Those who have comforted communities of lepers can speak from the authority of personal knowledge. Those who have picked flies from the eyes of a child to weak to move their own arms, they can speak of (about) compassion. Those who have suffered the parasites and diseases of the tropics can speak of the pain of understanding.

    How pompous, ignorant, and arrogant of you to judge whether anyone else has felt compassion for those people. No, I have not ever been hungry. No, I have not experienced oppression to this extent. But this is no reason to direct your own anger at how fucked up this system is at the people who are trapped in it. I’m not getting angry at you for being on a computer, am I? I’m not getting mad at you for paying taxes, am I? I’m not getting mad at you for using American dollars and running a business am I? Quite pointedly, get over yourself. Your holier-than-thou self-righteous attitude does nothing to help anyone. Honestly, how can you speak of compassion while being so judgmental? Am I less real of a person than people in 3rd world countries are?

    I’ve not been to Africa, but I’ve been to Honduras. I never looked at high school the same way again. It was one of the many reasons I dropped out. And you have no fucking clue what that was like.

    I readily acknowledge my own hypocrisy and difficulties. I hate it when people are judgmental, including me, because it helps nothing. Everyone is a hypocrite. Everyone can be judged for something. The point is to help people overcome their difficulties, not get mad at them and alienate them for what they already know to be problems.

    Comment by Devin — 5 November 2005 @ 7:01 PM

  19. “How pompous, ignorant, and arrogant of you to judge … anyone else…”

    TRUE - except perhaps the ignorant part, which is relative.

    Comment by guest — 5 November 2005 @ 7:19 PM

  20. Anonymous Guest– Anything relevant or insightful you might have to say is lost under your pomposity.

    Also, this:

    BTW, as I understand it, the Kalahari ‘bushmen’ (3 ‘tribes’ actually) are most-closely genetically related to the Australian Aborigines and to the Inuit of the arctic. Some ‘experts’ assert that these are isolatied surviving populations of proto-humans (not “identical” species as us) but, if true, I prefer to believe ‘we’ are actually the proto-humans and that they (might have been) the truely sapient apes.

    is completely incorrect.

    Comment by Steve Thomas — 7 November 2005 @ 12:40 PM

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